Okorie: UPP is Not for Secession
National Chairman of United Progressive Party (UPP), Chief Chekwas Okorie, in this interview with journalists, bares his mind on the burning national issues. Peter Uzoho was there
Your party, UPP posted an impressive showing in Awka during your national convention. What is expected from now on?
Let me say that Nigerians should look forward to a political party that is ideologically-rooted and is very conversant with the needs of the country at this point in time. There is no doubt that an overwhelming majority of Nigerians, have looked forward to the implementation of the recommendations of the 2014 constitutional conference. Those recommendations were not as exhaustive as many would want them to be. But over 600 recommendations, touched on so many aspects of our national life that would have balanced this country better than it is today and released the potentialities of many federating units and ethnic nationalities to develop at their own pace, to engage in the very healthy competition that would bring out the comparative advantages of all the federating units, for development and growth of the country.
That we believe in. But sadly, the All Progressives Congress, that has even Progressive in its name, and the party that participated from their state levels, because they control 24 states, out of the Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. And these 24 states and the Federal Capital Territory, contributed what they considered their best teams to the national conference. It was only the APC as a party that did not contribute the three slots given to them as a party. And so, one may say that those decisions were reached by a majority of the APC governors. And the same APC controls the National Assembly by majority.
So, for the President of Nigeria to dismiss that document and say that he has not read it, he would not read it and that it was going to be confined to the archives, was the biggest tragedy that befell Nigeria at the beginning of his government.
So, we felt as a political party there was something we could do about it. This is not a matter for the judiciary, to say we will go to court to challenge anybody. But that we will bring the entire recommendations, the highlights at least, and reduce it to a manifesto format and it becomes our social contract with the Nigerian people and an article of faith.
This is what we have succeeded in doing, at least, in terms of the ideological thrust of our party. And as we were doing this, we were also testing the grounds to see how prepared Nigerians are for this kind of radical departure from the status quo. And we found out that the people of Borno, especially the Southern Borno, would want the national conference recommendations almost as much as the people of the South-east would want it. The people of the Middle Belt, responded as the National Conference was intended to liberate them from the shackles of the hegemony of the caliphate. The Southern Zaria people responded enthusiastically to what we were ready to do as a political party. Not to talk about the Niger Delta people. Delegations upon delegations began to come to us from the various parts of the country to say this thing you’re canvassing, don’t ever relent, that is what is going to attract us to you. We want to see it in more concrete terms.
Again, Atiku Abubakar, began to play up the issue of restructuring. But the weakness in his own that made it look more like rhetoric was because he belongs to the party that is doing the opposite. And since Nigeria doesn’t run an independent candidate system, he couldn’t see how he was going to implement the opposite of what his party believes in. But all the same, his weighty voice gave credence to what the UPP had already articulated in our manifesto and constitution. Now, IBB has joined in saying, restructure Nigeria.
So, self-determination and restructuring has become a national singsong. Today, we’re the only political party of the 45 that exists at the moment that has come out with this bold initiative. So, as we approach the campaigns for 2019, we’ll take this message to every nook and cranny of this country, so that they will not see it as an Igbo agenda, but an agenda that will liberate Nigeria. Because what is holding Nigeria down is the type of structure it is operating and that structure must be dismantled and a new one put in place and you will see Nigeria experience a quantum leap in its development. So, this is what Nigerians should expect from us.
We are certain that having carried out this convention successfully, we’re now equipped as a political party and we are equipped to meet Nigerians in the field.
In other words, you’re saying that UPP is a national party?
It is far more national than any party that exists today, because I don’t see anything that makes APC a national party with its promotion of nepotism, sectionalism, lop-sidedness in appointments, and refusal to respond to the people’s needs. I have not seen anything whatsoever that makes APC national. When you look at it, you’re seeing a party representing a particular part of the country, with a sprinkle of people from other places. Like I said, no party in government has divided Nigeria more than APC. So, nothing makes it national. As for the PDP, it is just a shadow of itself. You can’t even place it, until it exists again. It is only existing in name because it is registered. But they have almost dissolved themselves. The leader of the bigger has publicly told their people to see political sanctuary elsewhere and they have been running into other parties. You can see the number of people that have run into the APC in the South-east. Of course, we have also benefitted. But, this time, we’re being careful to embrace those who are still young and have not been corrupted very badly by the PDP bad attitude.
So, having mentioned these two, because every political party must have a base, the UPP must have started being felt from the South-east. But we now have a message that the man in Southern Borno will begin to now have something in it for him, the Middle Belt are already seeing something in it for them. Nobody goes to a party if he doesn’t see anything that will endear him to that party. The national nature of the UPP will be seen by the time we hit the field.
But we must win Anambra first, because there must be a springboard. And it is just fortuitous that Anambra election is coming up in November and we have a clear one year between that time and the 2019 election to be able to make our message made and understood.
There is a dose of Biafran sentiment in UPP, given the pronouncements of most of your members. Why is it so?
Well, first of all, as I said before, this is the only party that is talking about self-determination and this is the only party that is talking of referendum. And the Nigerian constitution has no provision for referendum. Though it has a provision for self-determination, but nobody is canvassing that. It has no provision for, except it has a provision for the President, in the exercise of prerogative of mercy, have some people pardoned. But there is no clear-cut policy on the issue of freedom expression. So, what is no longer being talked about in developed countries and developing countries like treasonable felony or treason for merely expressing opinions is still very much observed in Nigeria, where mere expression is being branded as treason. We now said that our government will release unconditionally all those people who are prisoners of conscience, whose offences are only as a result of expressing their views as citizens.
So, those agitating for Biafra or for separation, believe that there is another way. Instead of exposing themselves in the streets and being shot, even though they are non-violent; that there is a political party, from where they can now influence the election of members of the House of Representatives, Senate and even governors and state assemblies, who have imbibed this ideological inclination of a party like this, so that their views can be heard and expressed where it should be, which is the National Assembly, where laws are made. So, they started embracing it.
Again, what they have now understood from us is that self-determination is not the same thing as secession. Of course, a political party registered in Nigeria is seeking power in Nigeria and not outside Nigeria. So, they have understood that and many of them for their own comfort, chose to now brand it as Biafran National Party, which is like slogan, which nobody can control.
So, that is it. The party has immediately become a movement of sort. It has also done Nigeria a very patriotic duty by de-emphasising street demonstrations and emphasising the political process, which is what is going on all over the world – in Scotland, in Ireland, in Catalonia, in Quebec in Canada -name it. They are all using the political process to make demands. And the countries where they are making these demands, continuously give them more and more accommodation to douse the demand.
That is why the referendum that took place in Scotland did not sail through, because the British Government granted them of much more than they were demanding and the majority of the people said, well, in this way, we are better off in a bigger country than a smaller country and the referendum failed. The same thing happened in Quebec. They’ve had two referendums, 10 years apart and the Canadian Government provided the people of Quebec much more that is agitating their minds and each time, the referendum will fail. Look at Ethiopia in Africa. Their own, they went further to include an exit clause in their constitution. Section 31 of the Ethiopian constitution is the provision for exit, that should any ethnic nationality feel strongly that they should opt out of the Ethiopian Republic, that they would invoke that provision, which involves a plebiscite, another name for referendum. And this was meant to calm nerves down after over 30 years of inter-ethnic wars. Since that time, not a single ethnic group has contemplated invoking that provision. The reason is that the government of Ethiopia no longer rides roughshod over other ethnic nationalities, because they are conscious of the fact that each ethnic nationality has an option under the law. And so, everybody is happy. Instead of breaking Ethiopia into pieces, it has united Ethiopia more than ever before. It is not likely that Ethiopia will find itself in those ethnic wars anymore.
So, it is important that we begin to look at what is working for other democracies and allow our own to grow like that. But, we seem to believe that we can force this marriage. No forced marriage even in human relationships ever works. Nobody is happy in a forced relationship. But allow the relationship to grow naturally and let there be mutual respect. I can tell you that Nigeria’s disintegration is made more difficult by the several years, hundreds of years, centuries of inter-ethnic relationship. But it is only when or two ethnic nationalities corner all the instruments of power and use it to suppress others that you find all these agitations that could boil over to violence.
In other words, UPP is not for secession?
No. UPP is not for secession. UPP is for a restructured country that gives every ethnic nationality a sense of liberty, a sense of freedom, a sense of enjoying its own effort in human development and substantial part of its natural endowment. And Nigeria is such a country that there is hardly any section that does not have one natural endowment or the other. But there is an attitude of both selfishness and wickedness on the part of those who have held Nigeria to the jugular, by emphasising only resources from oil and behaving in a manner that suggest that they couldn’t wait for this oil to be depleted and exhausted. So that they could now begin to explore their own. Nobody comes with such intrigues and grows a nation. All our resources should be developed at the same time and people will see why they cannot constitute an island onto themselves. There is no way UPP will advocate for secession. Because we believe that if we set out to achieve what we want to achieve, there will be no need to secede. What are you seceding from? From where to where? Look, let me tell you, Igbo people own this country more than any other ethnic group. And I say it with all sense of responsibility and sense of history.
I have been to Gusau. In the year, 2000, when I was invited as a special guest of honour to the Igbo Day celebration, it was such a colourful event. Forty-two town unions resident in Zamfara State, brought out their cultural groups of their various towns, developed there, not those invited from home. In the stadium, you could imagine where 42 cultural groups of different colourations performed. It was one of the most colourful events I ever attended. I became curious and then found out that there was a place called Northern Gusau, where there was an Igbo settlement for over 400 years. And that was the year 2000, the very year the Fulanis celebrated their bi-centenary of the establishment of the caliphate, which means from the time Uthman Dan Fodio came with his Fulani forces into Sokoto to the year 2000, was 200 years, two centuries. But Igbo people have been there 200 years earlier. I have had the privilege in the course of trying to see where my people are located, I have gone round Nigeria a minimum of 15 times in the 41 years I have been in this struggle and I have seen Igbo people, where they are located and the length of times they have spent in those places, generations after generations.
So, I said to myself – really, the people who own this land, will include the Igbo, the Hausa, the Kanuris, the Tivs, Ijaws, Yoruba, the Binis – name them. The latest entrants to the Nigerian geographical space are the Fulanis. All the other ethnic groups are more than 200 years old in Nigeria. And as for Igbo, God created them here. We didn’t migrate from anywhere to anywhere. Nigeria is only 117 years old as a country. That means the Igbo people have lived in those places centuries before the amalgamation.
So, when young impressionable begin to advocate our return from the North, I don’t blame them because what you don’t know, you don’t know. It is a tall order to ask people who cannot even locate their ancestral homes to return. Another take of it is that we have three or four times the number of Igbo people living outside Igboland than those living inside. I have also calculated that because of our people’s enterprise and adventurism, 80 to 90 per cent of Igbo billionaires, if not 99 per cent, are based outside Igboland. Only few have come back to establish their businesses in Igboland and you can name them on your fingertips.
So, what we should be doing is to encourage these billionaires to think home in terms of investments, so that Igbo areas can experience rapid industrial growth. That can be achieved and not to ask people to relocate. Even if Nigeria is divided, you do not move properties and human beings. You only redraw the map. Where you are a citizen you now become a foreigner, and adhere to the laws of the new country. It has happened in many places and our own will not be any different. But nobody is going in that direction.
I have always advocated it and I can say boldly that I was instrumental to Igbo people producing two members of the House of Representatives in Lagos State currently; because I went there to hold a townhall meeting at Sheraton Hotel in December 2014. I invited 86 extant Igbo associations, markets and other groups, excluding town unions. It was a very successful townhall meeting. It was on non-partisan basis, but highly political. Nobody ever had such a townhall meeting in Lagos before me or after me. In fact, they have been asking me to come for a repeat, which will hold, but this time it will be based on UPP. With that awareness, we now have at least two seats in the state assembly in Lagos and two in Abuja representing constituencies in Lagos. This is what I like to see in Kano, in Plateau State, and all the places where we have heavy presence in certain constituencies.
I will like to see us contribute to the election of a governor, who may not be Igbo, but may rely on Igbo votes to be able to form government. Such governments will definitely be more broad-based even in that state than what we have today. It is UPP that has a plan to unify Nigeria politically